Person or Process in Creation

Isaiah

Person or Process in Creation

May 27th, 1987 @ 7:30 PM

Isaiah 44:24

Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
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PERSON OR PROCESS IN CREATION

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Isaiah 44:24

5-27-87    7:30 p.m.

 

We welcome the throngs of you who share this hour on radio and on television.  You are a part of the First Baptist Church in Dallas.  This is the pastor bringing the message entitled Person or Process in Creation.  The national attention of America is focused upon a coming landmark decision in the states of Arkansas and Louisiana, in which federal courts are ruling that God creation can no longer be taught alongside evolution.  The American Civil Liberties Union is seeing to it step by step, and law by law, and court case by court case, that God is ruled out of the life and education of our nation.

On the other hand, the Bible is never clearer or more emphatic on any revealed subject in Holy Scripture than that He and He alone is the Creator of the world and all that is in it.  Beside Genesis, specific statements abound in which creation is woven into the very fabric of Holy Scripture.  These are but a few.  In Nehemiah 9:6:

Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven hast Thou invested them all, and the host of heaven worshippeth Thee.

 

In Isaiah 44:24:

Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself.

 

God did it and none other.

In Jeremiah 32:17: "Ah Lord God! Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and outstretched arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee."  In Acts 14, verse 15: "Ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein."  In Hebrews 1:10: "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands."  In Revelation 4:11: "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power:  for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."  These are but a few of the many and multitudinous Scriptures that present God Jehovah as the Creator and He alone of all the universe.

I have chosen three from the lips of our Lord: John 1:3: "All things were made by Him," our Lord, "and without Him was not any thing made that was made."  In Colossians 1:16: "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers:  all things were created by Him, and for Him."  And one other, in Hebrews 1, verses 1 and 2: "God hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds."  Throughout Scripture, inwoven throughout the infallible Word of God is the presentation of the Lord God as the mighty omnipotent Creator of all that we see in existence.

In Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11, we are admonished that the Lord made the earth, and the world, and the universe, and the starry heavens in six days.  And in that model of six days, the Sabbath day was created.  Wherever there is a plural "days" it is never used figuratively; it is always used in an exact number – six days.  And wherever in the Bible a numeral is used before the word "days," it refers to an actual day.  In Genesis 1, verse, "And the evening and the morning were the first day."  That expression "evening and morning" is never used figuratively in the Bible; it always refers to a day of twenty-four hours.  God divided the light from the darkness. God established a light-dark cycle as a principle measurement of time: one day.  And God created this world and this earth in six days.

In Hebrews 11, verse 3, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear"; the finest molecular atomic definition of creation to be found in human speech.  There existed no such thing as eternal matter.  The visible came into being from the invisible: God is the first and the only cause.  That is why evolutionists are atheists, and humanists, and secularists, and nihilists, because God is a fly in their ointment.  What we see is the work of God alone, the creation all around us.

The miracles of our Lord Jesus, such as the feeding of the five thousand, occurred by His omnipotent power and His mighty moving voice.  All the miracles occurred apart from a process, from a time period; all of His miracles were by His word.  The future denouement of the universe has nothing of evolution in it, but is the work of God alone, the intervention of God from heaven.  Eternity will not be evolved from the present world; rather, God will usher in the final age, and He will do it as omnipotently and omnisciently and as quickly as from nothing He created this present world.  So the end of the world is the work of God.  Thus the raising of the dead – these bodies, they do not evolve into life at the end of the world – they are raised by the power and the voice of Almighty God.

The foolishness of evolution is easily demonstrated.  In my studying and in my reading, I came across this, from am learned and educated man.  He wrote, "My niece came home from college one day and said to me, ‘My professor said that the first living germ came on a meteor.’  I said, ‘Honey, don’t you know a meteor is a blazing ball of fire?  How could a living germ exist in that?’  But she said, ‘The theory of evolution is the only sane explanation.’"

That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard in my life!  To be an evolutionist, you’d have to switch your brain out of reason and throw it into neutral.  Listen to what they say.  "Way back yonder sometime, somewhere, somehow, nobody knows when, how, where, or why, nothing gave birth to nothing, and nothing formed a something.  A germ got in the water somehow, then the water developed it into a tadpole.  And one day the tadpole swam to another bank and got stuck in the mud, dried there, wriggling around in the mud he formed warts on his belly that later became legs.  After he developed legs, he was climbing through the trees one day when his foot slipped; as he fell he wrapped his tail around a limb.  The jar of it broke off his tail.  He hit the ground, stood up on his feet, walked across the street, bought him a suit of clothes, went to teaching in the university and said, ‘Thank God I’m a man at last.’"  That’s what you have to believe if you believe all of this evolved. 

Everything that is had to have a beginning, except God:  He is the beginning of all things.  These are indisputable facts.  In geology: in the fossil record, there is an abrupt appearance of all kinds of life just as we see it current today.  There is no exception to that.  Number two: there is a mathematical impossibility that life evolved from dead, inert matter.  Number three: there is no record ever of an instance of evolution.  There are instances without number of differences in species; but always inside the species.  There are horses of all kinds.  There are cows of all kinds.  There are bugs of all kinds.  There are chickens of all kinds.  There are birds of all kinds.  There are all kinds of all kinds of all kinds of things; but always in the species.  There is never an evolution from one species into the other: always these changes are in the species.

Number four: what we see is always horizontal change within a species.  The gaps between species is never bridged; they remain distinct.  There are no true transitional forms; there is never a half-wing, or a half-feather, or a half-leg, or a half-scale.  It is always one or the other, as God created it.  Number five: there is no evolution taking place today; as there was none yesterday or at any time.  Number six:  all real change tends to go in the opposite direction of evolution.  I would call it "devolution."  Processes tend to go from organization to disorganization, from life to death; never from the simple to the more complex.  This is the indisputable second law of thermodynamics, which is universally true; namely, that all organization tends and leads to disorganization.  The whole universe is running down, not up.

Let me give you an example of that second law of thermodynamics – that all organization tends to disorganization.  If you have a poem, a beautiful poem, in say, set in type and you throw the type up in the air, and then you throw it up in the air, the more you throw it up in the air, the more it tends to come back down, disorganized; not more organized.  You don’t take type and throw it up in the air and finally it comes down into a beautiful poem, never, ever.  That’s the second law of thermodynamics.  Here it is again: leave cattle alone, and they tend to turn into scrubs; or leave horses alone and they tend to turn into broomtails.  They never evolve up; they always evolve down.  That’s following the second law of thermodynamics.

Number seven – these are facts – the secular, humanist evolutionist must face the fact that culturally, mankind has lived but a few thousand years; yet he says that biologically he has been evolving millions and millions of years.  Why the vast gap between the so-called evolution of his body and the evolution of his cultural life?  That would be inexplicable, according to their evolutionary formula.  The reason we have evolved or changed or developed culturally over a few thousand years is because we have lived in this world but a few thousand years.

May I apply this to man?  The evolutionist says that we are not fallen, rather we are stumbling upward.  And that is a common phrase they everlastingly use: we are "stumbling upward."  Given time, they say, we shall evolve out of sin, out of imperfection, into angelic beings, into angels, and finally into archangels.  Therefore we don’t need a Savior, and we don’t need atonement, and we don’t need Jesus.  All we need, according to them, is just time to evolve.

History denies that and God denies that.  If anyone persuades himself that this world is getting better, that we are evolving out of sin and out of violence and out of wrong, he doesn’t read the newspaper; nor is he cognizant of life in the city of Dallas or anywhere else in this earth.  Our race is as violent and vile and sinful today as it was in the days of Noah, or in the days of Lot, or in the days of the great intervention from heaven in the destruction of Jerusalem, or in the days of the prophesied great tribulation.  We don’t change.

Our hope lies in the Savior, in our conversion, in our acceptance of Him in our hearts and in our souls.  And outside of the grace and love and mercy of God, we have no hope either in this life or in the life to come.

That’s why we preach the gospel.  My brother, there is no other way.  There is no salvation, no name given under heaven except that of our blessed Lord Jesus [Acts 4:12].  And if I turn from Him, I turn to an inevitable death and darkness and despair.

In this moment when our people sing our hymn of appeal, I’ll be standing right here by the side of these steps, right there.  And this night, to give your heart to the Lord, or to bring your family into the circle and fellowship of our dear church, or to answer an appeal of the Holy Spirit made to your heart, make the decision now.  Do it now, and in this moment that we sing our hymn of appeal, on the first note of the first stanza, answer with your life.  Do it.  God bless you and angels attend you as you come, while we stand and while we sing.

PERSON OR PROCESS IN CREATION
Dr. W. A. Criswell

Isaiah 44:24

5-27-87

 

I.             
U.S. Courts vs Bible

1.    God being ruled
out of education

2.    Nehemiah 9:6,
Isaiah 44:24, Exodus 20:8-11

II.           
Evolution vs creation

1.    Evolution –
everything happened by accident, random acts

2.    Creation – God created
heavens and the earth

III.          
Facts

1.    Fossil record
shows there was an abrupt explosion of life at one point

2.    Mathematically impossible
for life to evolve from dead, inert matter

3.    No record of instance
of macro-evolution anywhere

4.    Change always
happens within a species – micro-evolution

5.    Evolution does
not take place today

6.    All real observed
change goes in the direction opposite of evolution – devolution, like the
second law of thermodynamics – organization tends and leads to disorganization

7.    Vast gap between
supposed man’s millions of years of evolution and human culture

IV.         
Man devolves downward throughout history but evolution theory says we
should be improving.  History denies evolution.